China celebrity crackdown: entertainment industry ordered to ensure all underage performers complete compulsory education
- China’s entertainment industry has seen a series of scandals involving tax evasion and sexual assault since the start of the year
- This latest directive adds to previous ones including banning stars with ‘incorrect’ political positions, behave unethically, or have ‘effeminate’ male styles
Beijing’s culture authority has ordered China’s entertainment industry to guarantee underage performers finish compulsory education and banned minors from participating in activities that support their idols amid an ongoing crackdown on celebrities and fandom culture.
Agents representing performers under the age of 18 should make sure they complete the mandatory nine years of schooling and refrain from “misleading minors” into beliefs such as “becoming famous when young”, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism said in a notice published on Friday.
Minors should also be banned from taking part in activities and purchases aimed at increasing a celebrity’s popularity. When a minor performs, the organiser needs agreement from a guardian in advance, it said.
The new instructions, with the aim of “better regulating the moral education” of entertainers, also ordered the industry to prohibit shows by any performer who either violates the law or breaches “ethical values”.
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“Abandon the worship for traffic and strive to be reputable literary and art workers both professionally and morally,” it said.
Agents have also been ordered to conduct rigorous background checks on performers and ensure they don’t represent anyone who is “alienated” from the Chinese Community Party or in breach of standards of “social equity and justice”.
The new Beijing directive has brought public attention to the regulation of minors as performers and fans, ordering the entertainment industry to attach more importance to academic study amid what the government considers a frenzy around idols by young people and an overzealous fan culture.
Currently, talent contest shows, a popular form of programme in which young participants compete to be idols, have been sending young people the “wrong idea” of achieving fame early in life, it said.
As idols and their fans became increasingly younger in recent years, there has been a growing concern in Beijing about obsessive fans and poorly behaved celebrities.
Chinese authorities have blasted some in the entertainment industry, which has witnessed a series of scandals involving tax evasion and sexual assault since the start of the year, for “severely polluting the social atmosphere”.
